He smelled. And he was dirty. And unshaven. Worst of all, he had a temper, which, while Emily considered he may have had good cause, made him sullen and uncommunicative.
She sat there on the buckboard trying to take in the enormity of what she had done. Not only had she left a reasonably comfortable—at least in the physical sense—home, but she had journeyed across the country to a person who wasn’t expecting her, to a place of which she had no concept, and to a life for which she was certainly not prepared. Dog-tired and ill after the expedition, right now she only wanted to sleep. And she certainly was not inclined to marry Mr. Daniel Saunders.
“No money,” he growled for at least the fiftieth time. “No money, and you come right across the country on a stolen ticket—”
“I did not steal!” She slapped her knee, indignation rife.
“Coulda fooled me. That ticket was sent to someone else, and you took it. So, what in tarnation do you call it? Borrowing?”
“I’ll repay you. You can have your lovely Ethel and your money back. I simply wanted to get away.”
“From what?”
The westerner reined the horses to a standstill in the middle of a vast expanse of grass. Prairie, Emily supposed. More darned prairie.
“From what, I asked you. What are you running from? I have a right to know whom I’m taking into my house. Even for a short time.”
“I’m running…” She sat and attempted to figure out how to explain, how to describe what she was running from, or running to. How to defend her actions to a stranger—why she had taken the tickets meant for someone else, someone he apparently had come to love, someone not her.
“Well, I’m waiting,” he snapped.
Emily flinched. Exhaustion was getting the better of her, and she still sensed the need to justify her actions. “I wanted...a different life. I wanted a life of my own, a life where I could make the decisions, not my brother—”
“Your brother?” There was a moment’s hesitation as his mouth set in a hard line. “What’s his name, may I ask?”
“Wilfred, Wilfred Darling.” She crossed her arms and sighed. “What difference does it make?”
Saunders stomped his foot on the board and bit his lip as the horses stamped their dismay. “Damn. Of all the damnable… Damn, damn, damn. Now I gotta worry ’bout your brother coming after you? Great!”
“I doubt he’ll bother.” She straightened her back, gaze ahead. “Unless, of course, he finds something missing—which he won’t. I’m not a thief.”
Her host snorted. He cracked the reins over his horses’ backs and the wagon jolted forward once more. “I don’t understand. You left a home, a brother—family—and you come west on someone else’s money. That doesn’t make sense.”
Emily faced him squarely. She supposed if he trimmed his beard and had a haircut he mightn’t be half-bad. His hat was tilted down, but she remembered the two huge eyes, hazel with a fire in them, the fire of his anger no doubt. His disappointment. She hadn’t considered his feelings when she’d settled on this escapade; she hadn’t cared what he would go through when his ‘dearest darling’ Ethel didn’t show up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Truly I am. Only…I needed to get away.”
“Why?” He dragged out the word, demanding an answer.
Emily let out a heartfelt sigh. “My father was English. He believed men should inherit, not women. When he passed away in ’87, he left everything to my brother—there were just the two of us, and I suppose he believed I would marry—”
“So, why didn’t you?”
The impertinence of the question! Her mouth gaped open a moment before she shut it again, exhaled, and announced, “Few men in my circle met my…criteria. After Father’s death, few men would marry a woman without a dowry.”
“Your ‘circle?’” Saunders mocked. “Hell, that must be some circle of friends you got there, lady.” He rubbed his chin and then gave the reins a shake. “Yeah, I know about people like that,” he muttered half to himself. “Went to school with them.”
“Here? In Wyoming?” She studied him a long moment. That beautifully written letter flashed through her mind again, and now the comment about school. No, none of that came from the wilds of Wyoming. “You’re from back east, aren’t you?”
“Yup.” He slid a suspicious gaze toward her. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Why should I change the subject? I have nothing to hide.” Tidying her skirts about her, she waited for his response, for him to say more about his background, but a cold silence was his only reply. “I’ve explained,” she continued wearily. “I wanted to get away. Start a new life. The letter arrived—there was no way one could read the correct address, it had been ruined by rain—so I opened it. Curious. And then the tickets fell out and I thought—”
“I know what you thought. I know what you felt.”
Emily shrank from the steel in his voice. “I doubt it.” She clasped her hands. “I will pay you back. I promise. I’ve kept house for my brother for the last five years. I’m no stranger to work whatever you think. I shall pay you back.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You bet you will, lady. Right down to the last two bits.”
Snow flurried then, a few flakes at first as if the angels had shaken out a pillow filled with frozen crystals.
For a while, the wagon bumped along. Emily sensed the intended groom had pulled away from her, a poison, the contagion that had ruined his life.
The rolling, juddering, and the fresh air took their effect, and her head drooped forward before she shivered awake again and sat up. “Is it much farther?” she enquired at last, dusting a few flakes from her coat.
“A ways.” After a moment, as if thinking out loud, he mumbled, “How am I going to tell this to Ethel? How am I going to explain? What can I possibly write… Damn it,” he shouted. “Damn damn damn!”
So, this was the man who had penned that loving letter, the educated man who had written such wonderful things, who had inspired her, given her the courage to come all this way. This was the Daniel Saunders—no, Daniel, as she’d come to think of him—who had been in her heart all that long journey from New York.
How wrong could I be?
She struggled to swallow a sob as tears began to mix with the falling snow.
How very wrong could I be?